How do people talk about their depression?
Having dealt with similar mental health challenges in my life, depression is a topic close to my heart. I've also always found it interesting to hear other people describe their experiences, as it can be quite comforting to see how not alone we are in our struggles.
For this visualisation, I took a dataset that gathered english depression related posts from Reddit, cleaned up the text for processing in python, and applied frequency analysis to it. I then visualised the results as word clouds using the free application on wordclouds.com which allowed me to easily customise the mask shape and font. Below is a visualisation of the words most frequently used in within the content of a post.
Sadness and overwhelming stress bleeds through those words. It's evident that depression can take quite a large toll on a person's wellbeing. Many posts discuss school stress and work stress, feeling of loneliness and immense dissatisfaction with life. The words used also show how depression can make one hyper focus on one's own subjective experience and misery as they become trapped in their own thoughts (Im, I feel, I know, I cant, I want). Indeed, depression is often coupled with heightened self consciousness and insecurity, which can be exacerbated by loliness and isolation.
The above shows the words most frequently put in post titles, and it is clear that people often seek out forums like reddit to cry for help, and to be heard by anyone.